Just came back to US, passed custom, and finally got our temporary visa (valid for one year) stamped. It's been a tough CP for both my wife and I. My wife is the primary winner and I am just the spouse. Her case number is 2008AS10XX and we had our interview on Oct. 1st in Tokyo, Japan. She is Japanese and I am from Taiwan. The interview took longer than we thought (about 10 mins or so) and did not go as smooth compare to other successful cases I read on this forum, needless to say about the painful waiting time.
Our appointment was 8:30 AM and, of course, we arrived much earlier than the appointment time. Since our appointment time was so early, we thought we should be the first one or two immigration visa interview at that day; however, there were eight groups in front of us already. Only the first calling (document checking) is following by the arrival order (we were No. 9), it became random calling after that (taking fingerprints, interview …etc.). I am not sure what the reason was (maybe we were couple or I am from different country than Japan), but many people came after us end up getting their interview before us.
10:45 AM was the time we finally talked to IO. The conversation started with simple greeting with oath and some straight forward questions, such as “how long you guys been live in the US”, “ how long you guys been married”, “where do you live in US?”, “What kind of job my wife has”. Then, the interesting part began, he started to focus on me. He asked about my military service and my job in detail, such as “what did I do in military?” and “What king of job do I have?”. Since I am a programmer, he started to ask my job description, and qualification, such as “what kind of programming do I do?”, “what language do I use?”, “examples?”, “what’s the requirement of my job?” …etc. I was not expecting to become the focus of this interview since I am not the primary winner.
After that, he had couple “concerns” regarding to my birth certificate and household registration record (Koseki) different than what they usually received from people from Taiwan. One problem was the format of my birth certificate. It did not have my name listed clearly at the beginning but at bottom right corner of the “paper” (not even in the form). It was issued from hospital where I was born and accepted by registration office as the “Official Birth Certificate”. It was original copy from hospital 33 years ago and now kept in registration office. I guess things were different back at that time.
Similar thing happened to my household registration record. I went back Taiwan to request the household registration record from household registration office. They issued only the part about me (my name, my ID number, my parents’ names, where I was born …etc.) and didn’t include the whole family’s information (my brother’s name, my sister’s name …etc.). Because of this, the print out has “partial” on the certificate title. The IO concern this might not include my complete information (he thought “partial” means “my partial information”).
As a result, he was saying that they needed to contact American Embassy in Taiwan to verify these documents and could not issue us the VISA until documents were verified. So, I suggest him to keep our passports and inform us when documents are verified and our VISA are issued.
We ended up had to take an additional week off, postpone our flight, and pay around $19 per call or per email to the customer care company authorized by the embassy to check on our visa status. There is no direct line to contact the Embassy, only through the customer care company. And, even the customer care company can only communicate with Embassy through Email. Each status check request submitted by custom and sent out by the customer care company will take up to three days to respond. We called 4 times and wrote one email, but no one could give us a clear answer whether document had been verified or additional document was need).
It took them 10 days to finally issue our visa. Those 10 days felt like a month long. My wife was so depressed that she had hard time to sleep. I felt so hopeless and kept contact my family in Taiwan to gather any additional document that might help embassy speed up the process, but to be honest with you all, even after I received my visa, I still not sure what was the correct birth document that helped me received the visa. IO kept mentioning about a document has a red seal on it, but none of my birth certificate or my household registration certificate has red seal on it.
In short, do as much research as possible (contact embassy if needed) to make sure what are those exactly documents does the embassy need and get them as early as you can (however, there is a “within 6 month” restriction on some documents, so be careful).
Above is my personal experience with Tokyo embassy, it might not apply to other embassy, so aware.
Finally, good luck to all of you who have your interview coming up!
